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The story so far...
When Bud the dispatcher doesn't have a load ready, Mark gets on his case and ends up telling him that dispatching can't be all that hard. Bud suggests Mark take his place for a couple of days and, with no load waiting, Mark takes him up on it.
After Bud shows Mark around the office, Mark takes over as dispatcher. Things start going wrong almost immediately with Mark tackling problems he had no idea were part of a dispatcher's job. After calming a driver down for accidentally sending him 450 miles to the wrong destination, he begins to feel that maybe dispatching is tougher than he'd thought and maybe Bud was better at it than he gave him credit for.
But while he's fixed that problem, others keep coming until Mark seems to have reached his limit. That's when a big, angry truck driver storms into the office looking to crack open Mark's skull with a tire iron.
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"Who are you?"
"Don't give me that!" the man said, slamming the tire iron down on top of a desk. "You know damn well who I am."
Mark studied the man's face for a few seconds. His hair was long, pulled straight back and tied in a ponytail. He had a couple day's worth of stubble, but it was neatly trimmed and looked like the beginning of a decent beard. His eyes were big and mean, like they were on fire, and there was a wild sneer on his lips, like he was in no mood to talk.
Mark had never seen the man before in his life.
"Sorry, but I don't know who you are," Mark said, sliding to his left to try and keep a desk and a few chairs between him and the madman. "I've never seen you before."
"You sure about that, are you?" He swung the tire iron and caught a coffee mug on the desk. Luckily the mug had been empty, but ceramic shards went flying all over the office.
"Believe me, I'd remember someone like you."
"Is that right?"
Mark had run out of room on his left and was now moving back to the right. "That's right. I just met you and I...